Mobile devices such as cellphones, smartphones, tablets and laptops are ubiquitous. While they were originally introduced to provide rudimentary functionality, such as telephony and text messaging, they have now evolved to the point that they have begun to replicate the functions of physically much larger computers, such as desktop personal computers. Accordingly, mobile devices are beginning to be used for gaming, desktop publishing and graphics and video editing. These are particularly computation- and graphics-intensive applications, and test the general- and special-purpose processing and storage limits of mobile devices.
Supporting the ever-intensifying use of mobile devices is an evermore-capable wireless network infrastructure, making its presence known in both cellular and wireless Internet access (Wi-Fi) forms. Consequently, mobile devices are able to make higher-bandwidth, more reliable wireless connections in more places than ever before possible.
As a result of all of the above, more-capable mobile devices (smartphones, gaming consoles and tablets in particular) have begun to spawn short-range wireless networks of their own, allowing other devices to be “tethered” to the more-capable mobile devices, which then serve as proxies for access to the wireless network infrastructure. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct are two notable technologies that make possible such short-range peer-to-peer wireless networks, sometimes called personal area networks (PANs) or piconets. Not only can two smartphones, pads and tablets be tethered to one another via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi Direct, but a host of less-capable devices can be tethered as well, such as cell phones, earphones, headsets, speakers, displays, gaming controllers and remotes, sensors and actuators, to name just a few.